This post was written by Noelle Nyirenda ’19
Row upon row of solar panels reflect the Zambian sky while they silently and cleanly produce enough electricity to power over fifty thousand homes. Walking the solar plant that covers almost 50 hectares in the special economic zone outside the capital city, I am exhausted but filled with hope. Renewable energy is no longer a niche technology that “serious” business people don’t even consider but the preferred source of electrical energy for most countries.
I am at the Bangweulu Solar plant where I have been contracted as the commissioning engineer to ensure that the project can be handed over to the client and be ready to be brought online at an inauguration ceremony that will be attended by the president, US ambassador and other dignitaries.
This is grueling work, and the timeline is stressful, I only had four hours of sleep after flying in from Vermont before I had to be onsite for a planning meeting and hit the ground running. However, I know that this project marks a significant time for me and the company I am working worth. This project is about more than handing over yet another installation successfully to our client, it’s about capacity building and developing skills to make Zambia’s energy infrastructure more sustainable. The Bangweulu project was made possible by a financing structure that brought development partners and private business together.
This belief in the idea that value can be created at the confluence of social development and business enterprise is what brought me to The Sustainable Innovation MBA program at UVM.
